The Rev. Frank Logue
King of Peace Episcopal Church
Kingsland, Georgia
February 22, 2004 

A Still More Excellent Way
1 Corinthians 12:27-13:13

In this morning’s reading from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, we get some of the most beautiful language found anywhere on love. Paul writes,

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.

The only problem with these beautiful words is that they don’t sound true. “Love never fails.” It makes you wonder if Saint Paul got around much. Didn’t he have the foresight to know that this reading would be perhaps the single most popular scripture reading for a wedding ceremony? Most weddings you go to will include this reading from First Corinthians. Yet, in this time and place half of all marriages end in divorce. Love seems to fail about half the time.

But a quick look at the Greek text of this passage shows that Paul writes using the word Agape. Agape is one of the three Greek words for love used in the New Testament. There is eros, or erotic love and phileo, or brotherly love. Finally Agape, a self-giving love routinely shown to be the love God has for us. It is this Agape which bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all thing. It is this self-giving agape love of God which never fails.

Paul asks the Christians in Corinth if they want greater gifts from God and then he calls agape love a still more excellent way. To set love in an extreme example, Paul writes that if he understands all mysteries and has faith so as to move mountains, but has not love, he is nothing. If he were to give away everything he owns and hands over even his very life, but has not agape love then he is nothing.

So what is the difference between this godly love that never fails and the kind of love that can have half of all marriages end in divorce? The difference is that love that starts with us and goes out to another person is usually conditional.[1] I love you as you are now, or as I wish you were, or as I think you are. This love begins with me and goes out to you. If I change and you change, this feeling of love may go away. I’ll just wake up and realize that it has gone away and may never return. At that point, I can either give up on love and stick with a loveless marriage, or I can give up on you and seek love elsewhere. Neither of these are suggested by scripture.

Instead, Paul tells us that a still more excellent way. We can infuse our lives with agape, the love that is God’s love for us. Agape love starts with God, and God’s love for us. With this love of God and God’s love for me, I can then start to see other people as God sees them. From this experience, I can reach out in love to others with the love that begins in the very life and nature of God. That love is not conditional. God’s love for your spouse, is not dependent on their likes and dislikes, their job, their mood or anything else so changeable. God’s love for your children does not depend on their lovability. God’s love for your friends does not depend on whether or not they let you down. God’s love for everyone else is a lot like God’s love for you and it is a lot more dependable than you are.

Creation itself was an act of love. The love of God that was in the Trinity before creation overflowed into this world of ours and that loves continues even as we are fallen and not disserving of it. This is the love that never fails. This is the love Jesus had that as he died on the cross he could look out at those who killed him, on those who were mocking him and say, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

Forgiving those who killed him was the most precarious thing an all-powerful God could do. When God became flesh in the person of Jesus and lived among us, it was possible that no one would return that love. The incarnation—God’s becoming human—is when God risked everything for love. There is always the possibility in love that it will not be returned. But God came and lived among us and when the cost of that love was a brutal death, then God did not give up on that love. God could have come, lived among us, died for that love and no one notice or care. This precarious act of loving even though it may well not be returned is part of the agape love of God. This love that cares for the other as much as for yourself is the still more excellent way.

I want to give you an example of what that agape love of God looks likes in the real world, in a marriage of all things. James Peterson recounts a story of Agape in his book “More I Could Not Ask.”

One morning, a man in his thirties arrived at the rectory wanting to have a priest to take care of his father, who was dying. We traveled in his jeep over very rugged hillsides to the edge of the island. There was a lonely thatched hut, which seemed to me to be a piece of Africa. Inside, the only furniture was a thin hammock strung from one side of the room to the other. A thin, skeletal remnant of a man was lying in it. He was wrinkled, gray, breathing with difficulty. His wife, herself just a wisp of a human being, was gently swaying the hammock to cool and comfort him. She said nothing, but she was obviously glad at my arrival. She and her son left for a few minutes. The boy had told me his father had not received the sacraments for years, and I wanted to hear his confession. After confession, I called them back in, and they knelt there as I anointed the man. However, when I tried to give him communion, he pointed to his throat and shook his head.

The woman was on her feet almost at once; she took a small piece of cotton from a box and pointed to a glass of juice. Her husband had some throat obstruction, but if she dipped the cotton in juice and placed a small particle of the host on it, when he sucked in the juice, she knew he could receive communion. No theology; no embarrassment. She just wanted to give her husband communion before he died. I agreed readily, and she gave him communion. As soon as he received communion, she fainted. I realized she was hardly breathing, and while her son went for the doctor, I anointed her and prayed for her. She died just after her son returned. After a while, he said we ought to go back to the rectory. On the way back, I learned that he was one of ten children, but the only one who survived infancy. He loved his mother and would miss her a great deal, but he was convinced that she had gone on living for years after she was not strong enough to live simply because she did not want to die without helping her husband to make peace with God. When that happened, he knew she realized that her work was done. He didn't expect that his father would outlive her by more than a few days. The faith and love and simple reverence for the Eucharist that were brought together in that thatched hut were enormous.

Amen.